Thursday, 26 November 2015

‘As Shakespeare said, you can call spirits from the vastly deep, but will they answer?’

Mr. Franklin. Hound of the Baskervilles. 20thCentury Fox 1939

Stephen Fowler explores his fascination with American B movies of the 1930’s & 40’s fascination with Spiritualism, séances and Mediums in his Artist Book, Cosmic Forces.

Throughout the period these cheap and quickly made films often employed the paranormal in highly effective ends, creating scary and haunting atmospheres to chill the cinema audience.

Introducing and utilizing the props of Spiritualism such as darkened rooms, ouija boards, floating spirit hands and voices and ectoplasm was an economical means to convey the strange and ‘other’. Another was exploiting the suspicion of the outsider in casting brilliant Eastern European and Asian character actors as Spirit Mediums. Scriptwriters drafted eerie, eccentric and sometimes profound lines and for these actors to speak,

‘those beyond, they know, they told me death would come among us’

Mrs. Walters. Charlie Chan’s Murder Cruise, 20th Century Fox 1940

I made this book by printing a selection of my hand cut rubber stamps.

I stretched the paper and painted it with some very old antique red drawing ink, then I printed/stamped with thick strong bleach, oil and water based ink.

I'm pleased to announce that a limited edition pressing of the concertina book has been made and is available via my email. sngfowler@yahoo.co.uk